At center wearing her ribbon around her head, Courtney Haggard and a group of supporters get ready to walk five kilometers through Wrangell midday Saturday, to raise awareness of slavery still ongoing in the 21st Century.
A group of residents last weekend took part in a march meant to remind the community that slavery is still a problem in the world today.
The United Nations' International Labour Organization estimates that over 40,000,000 people around the world are involved in modern slavery, which involves work or situations performed involuntarily and under threat of violence or penalty. That averages out to 5.4 people for every 1,000, with a quarter of those being children. Just under 25 million enslaved people are exploited through forced labor, mostly in domestic work, construction and agriculture, but a fifth of those are engaged in forced sexual exploitation.
"There's a lot of labor trafficking that happens in countries like Russia and the Ukraine," explained Courtney Haggard, a Wrangell college student who organized Saturday's local 5K.
"Human trafficking is something that has been on my heart to fight since I was in high school," she recounted.
Now taking courses online in family studies at Southwestern Assemblies of God University in Texas, Haggard was drawn to the efforts of the A21 campaign, a non-profit which for the past nine years has focused its attention on the problematic topic. The group operates internationally, with 12 offices in 11 countries and four continents working on combinations of preempting trafficking, intervention and restorative aftercare. For the past four years its "Walk for Freedom" 5K has sought to increase visibility of the problem and garner support for it and other organizations' efforts toward eradicating slavery.
"It's a walk for freedom that raises awareness, funds and just gives people more knowledge about human trafficking. It's a very big issue around the world and in America, more than people realize," said the Wrangell student. "I've seen it and wanted to do one so bad," she said of the A21 walks. But rather than travel elsewhere to participate, Haggard felt one could be held here at home.
Though slavery was formally abolished in the United States with passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865, the problem of forced labor in the country persists to the present. Modern slavery and human trafficking is a problem even in Alaska, to the extent the Municipality of Anchorage and state Department of Labor created a work group on human trafficking in 2015.
In a 2012 report prepared by a statewide task force, it noted that hard statistics on the scope of the problem can be difficult to ascertain, but that human trafficking victims can be found not only working as prostitutes, but as home health care providers, construction and maintenance workers, and in restaurants and bars, the canning and fisheries industry, nail salons and other sectors.
For the Wrangell walk, Haggard obtained tee-shirts and other materials from the A21 campaign. The action packs they provided include bright yellow ribbons for walkers to wear, each highlighting the name of a victim of human trafficking and forced labor. Haggard's read "Eve," a seven-year-old girl in Cambodia sold into sex work by her family. She noted that the motivations behind human trafficking can be complex, with many cases driven by destitution, and nearly all taking advantage of victims' vulnerability.
Several dozen others joined her midday Saturday at the city dock, ahead of Anti-Slavery Day on October 18. "Pretty much everyone standing here now has been with me for the past two months since I set this up," she explained.
The route Haggard picked out would take them down Front Street, and from there to City Park and a refreshment table.
"We're going to walk through town so we can get a lot of people looking and asking questions, because that's part of the point, to get people to ask 'What are you walking for?' We're walking for the people who have been silenced, we're raising a voice for them," she said. "I just definitely want to say 'thank you' to this group of people that has backed me. They've been so supportive with this crazy idea that I've had."
Haggard set up a fundraising site at http://www.A21.org/Wrangell, which is as of Tuesday already three-quarters toward its $1,000 goal. The site also provides additional information on the problem of modern-day slavery, and ways to help. Additional information on how to spot possible instances of trafficking and coerced labor and how to report it in Alaska are at http://www.muni.org/Departments/Mayor/FirstLady/Pages/HumanTrafficking.aspx
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